Ford Motor Co. hit another milestone with its all-electric 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning.
The company has confirmed reaching 100,000 reservations since its global debut three weeks ago at world headquarters in Dearborn.
“We’re super excited about the demand,” Emma Bergg, Ford spokeswoman, told the Free Press on Thursday. “Orders are getting added all the time.”
The automaker accepts $100 refundable reservations to place an order for the 2022 pickup truck that will be built in a new $700 million plant at the Rouge Complex. You can find affordable rates for Ford F150 insurance at ZeCoverage.
Making online refundable reservation orders is part of a new protocol for carmakers. Ford did the same with its all-electric Mustang Mach-E which is selling well even at a used car dealership.
Meanwhile, Ford is touting its ability to recruit top talent to develop the latest digital technology as the company increases its all-electric and hybrid vehicle options. If you own a chevy truck, you might want to install a chevy hei distributor to keep up with the newer trucks.
Ford CEO Jim Farley has said the company will use data and software expertise on a scale the industry hasn’t seen. This is a key part of a strategy to offer digital services and subscription revenue that changes car sales from a one-time transaction process.
Industry analysts and the media have wondered whether the Ford team can find the talent it needs to lead a high-tech era.
“At its core, at Ford we’re solving big challenges, right? Tremendous challenges. We’re sitting at a point the industry that’s transforming and a company that’s transforming. We find that getting the software talent into Ford with that kind of a challenge is actually an easy proposition,” Alex Purdy, director of business operations, enterprise connectivity, told reporters during a call on Capital Markets Day on May 26.
“I was trying to recruit somebody from Google just last week and they’re coming from a business that encourages consumers to click on ads. We’re coming from a business that is going to bring mobility to a whole new generation,” he said.
“I think it’s because of the challenge that we have success and we’ve had some really good luck getting the talent. But there’s a lot more in front of us,” Purdy said. “We have over 6,000 software engineers today at Ford and, of those, 600 of them have joined us really in 2021. We still have a lot more to go. But we think that the challenge, and the path we just laid out in terms of a strategy, is a compelling reason for talent to come and join us.”
Consumers have moved from enhancing technology at home to asking for more technology in their vehicles. That means carmakers need software engineering talent.
Silicon Valley companies have taken great pride in the quality of their software engineers, including all-electric carmaker Tesla.
Will those brilliant minds so in demand in California work for a legacy automaker?
“What we’re learning as we go through this process … it’s not the talent outside Ford coming to Ford is a challenge, actually,” Farley told reporters after his May 26 presentation to Wall Street analysts. “The challenge is reorienting Ford to think about software experiences before we think about anything else. That’s the change. That’s the really big opportunity for us … throughout the organization.”
And while analysts and investors often ask about potential partners, Farley revealed different technology plans for retail customers and commercial customers.
When it comes to Ford Pro Business, “I don’t think that ecosystem will be partnered. “That is something Ford will do,” he said. “It’s not one size fits all. We’ll probably have a much smaller footprint of partners on the technology side because that’s an ecosystem we want to build at Ford.”
The automaker had more than 7,000 software engineers in the U.S. and Canada working on design, architecture, data, testing and other technical and infrastructure roles as of Thursday, said Marisa Bradley, Ford spokeswoman.
Farley, who took the helm as CEO on Oct. 1, began the push to hire software engineers in a previous role at the company leading technology. Former CEO Jim Hackett announced in April 2019 an enhanced focus on new business, technology and big data.
“We have hired 600 software engineers this year alone, so that is certainly more than we have in one year before,” Bradley said. “The push started before Jim Farley became CEO, but he was in the new business role, so he certainly was a catalyst.”
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at [email protected] or call/text 313-618-1034. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.
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Where are the charging stations for the Ford Pick ups? Where is the electricity going to come from for the charging stations? Won’t this cause global warming? I thought mining for minerals for batteries would cause global warming? Many of these minerals for batteries are going to come from communist China. Isn’t it nice that communist China, will as a result, control the auto industry? Where is the energy going to come from to make the plastic casing for the batteries?
Also, which nation’s slave labor is making all the batteries!?
Are the sheeple going to be herded into buying electric vehicles like they were herded into lockdowns and mask-wearing?
it sure seems that is the direction they are pushing. Better look at the long term views of going this way. Costs a lot to create the electricity to charge all these batteries. Why did they give up on the gas/electric type vehicles? Movement of the vehicle by gas charges the battery to use when wanted seems logical.
They are certainly TRYING hard to push everyone to buy electric..
It’s so when they decide to take the grid out you will not be able to travel anywhere by vehicle. Personally, I would pay real money to someone to take out the cell phone grid just to watch the total meltdown of humanity…
The company has confirmed reaching 100,000 reservations since its global debut three weeks ago at world headquarters in Dearborn.
Dominion didn’t design the software for taking those reservations did they?
That was the truck that Lyin’ Joe was “driving”? I would have put more faith in it if it had been drawn by four mules. After that freak show I wouldn’t believe anything they said….Including the number of reservations.
I researched buying a second small electric car. The least expensive was a Tesla that will only get 100 miles on a charge. With the price of electricity going up, due to inflation, it will soon be as expensive per mile to drive an electric car as a gas car. Current housing tracts were wired for home use and will not support very many electric cars being charged overnight. It will cost trillions of dollars to wire up America if even 15 to 20 % of all cars become electric. Right now, research says that, at best, the maximum amount of our energy needs that could be met by electricity is 40%, assuming we have the trillions of dollars to make it happen. That figure does not take into account a massive expansion of electric cars. Of course, Democrats don’t care about facts, only the HYPE!!!
AND that’s assuming you can continually get a full charge.. AS i know from my time in the military, Rechargable batteries are well known for building up what’s known as a “Memory”.. So if its only say, discharged down to 20%, then recharged, soon it will start only RECHARGING UP TO 80% effectiveness…
Texas is a huge pickup truck market, so if the Texans go for the electrics, what happens if they have another ice storm like this year’s disaster? The goofy windmills froze up, and then so did the folks wrapped in blankets because they had no heat. Will that memory affect their future vehicle choices? Maybe the liberal CA transplants will buy the electric trucks like they have bought Teslas.
I doubt those living in texas, would be that foolish… BUT who knows.
No I will not buy an electric pickup, the closest I would come is buying a hybrid.
There are NO electric vehicles capable of trips longer than 300 miles, and most can’t get beyond 100 mies. Then at least 8 hours to charge them. No thanks !
Can you imagine how long it would take, using one of these fangango electric monstrosities, to do a FULL COAST to Coast trip, say along I40?? Rather than 5-6 days as normal with using a gas car, it would take a good 2 months!
I would guess the majority of the people “reserving” the new pickup are “Hollywood” type that really have no intention of using it as a true pickup but rather driving around LA, San Francisco etc showing how “green” they are.
That certainly wouldn’t shock me. OR it was bought by the rich fops in Austin, again to look woke.